Sometimes your body just says "slow down". Mine did this this past week. I've been pushing myself pretty hard lately so on Wednesday when my throat starting feeling scratchy and my nose started to itch I recognized the signs for what they were. I know I have to take it easy for a few days right now and take time to recover, because starting next week I'm kicking it into high gear with the training. T Minus 8 weeks till I start racing the serious courses. My goal for those races is going to start out being "try not to come in last". Then we'll work from there.

And now time for a story.

Before I slowed down this week, I went on a nice little xc ride. Or so it was described to me. I knew it was going to be interesting when I immediately went the wrong way up a really steep hill and reached the end within 5 minutes at a gate that said private property, keep out. Hm... So I called the person who sent me on the ride and sure enough, there should be no gate if I'd gone the right way. So down one big hill I go and right back up another. Since I had gotten lost in the first 5 minutes, I think the guy started to worry about me so he came up to the top of the hill in his truck and showed me where I wanted to go. So off I went, sure I wouldn't get lost again at least until I tried to come back a different way at the end. What I was not made aware of was that around the first corner, this nice looking trail would turn into a giant boulder field that I would come into at top speed without knowing it was there. This led to a pretty much immediate OTB and a sliced open knee. Remember, I know i have at LEAST an hour and a half to go at this point. Well, my next discovery was that there were goat trails everywhere and no real direct or fully rideable route to the road I could see in the distance. I picked my way slowly but surely, walking and riding where necesseary/possible and doubling back several times, towards the road I knew I needed to get to.

Once I made it to the road, I thought I was good. I was all ready to be well on my way, a hard climb, but nothing I'd not done before, and I knew my way. However... the road had obviously just had a mudslide rush down it and was all this wierd sticky/sandy dirt not at all conducive to climbing. So... that was miserable, and ended with having to climb over a pile of sandbags and concrete barriers while be watched by some surly looking construction workers. Good news though! I'm finally at the beginning of the ride!!

By this time I was hot and realized I had forgotten to put sunscreen on and I'd glanced down at my knee and contemplated the thought that I might need a stitch in the deepest part of the cut. For half a second, I thought about turning back, but I assured myself that the hardest part was over, and at least the road ahead was familiar so I decided to push on. So up and away I went, the climb didn't seem as bad as I remembered and I thought I was in the clear. The downhill was kind of a disappointment because someone had done some trail "maintenance" and really made the trail less fun for mountain bikers. Who puts waterbars in the apex of a switchback anyway? I also had another dramatic fall in front of some firemen when a rut jumped out at me out of nowhere, those darn sneaky ruts. Still, the trail was enjoyable, and as I headed back towards my starting point, I had convinced myself it had been a good ride despite the rough start.

Now, at this point, I could have just gone back the way I came. I could have taken the easy way home. But no, that's not my style I decide, so I peel off the road to try the donkey trails because of the promise of fun single track down the side of a hill and back to my starting point. This was a mistake. I took wrong turn after wrong turn and the donkey trails were literally donkey trails. I had donkey's stalking me from every side the whole time (donkey's are scary!) and the trails were full of hoof holes making them less than easy to ride. Tired, sunburnt and starting to notice the pain in my sliced knee, I finally gave up my quest for a perfect finish, and dropped into a concrete drainage ditch and finished up street bike styles. I thought for a moment as I came around the last turn, that I was going to end up facing a barbed wire fence, which by the way would have made this story even more awesome... but there was a missing piece in the fence and I snuck my little self through with a quick thanks to the mountain biking gods.

Needless to say, I was glad to see the pavement and the final hill which would take me to my truck, but although this may sound to some like the ride from hell, this is exactly the type of ride that makes me love mountain biking so much. There is something utterly satisfying about being challenged mentally and physically and still making it out with a smile on my face. The adventure is what keeps it interesting. Someone once said to me, it's not a good ride if there's not a little blood. I laughed when they said that, but it's pretty close to true.

Moral of the story though, if you ever meet someone named Robert Bender and he says he can send you on a nice ride... expect an adventure...